Monday, April 17, 2017

Unless you're Egyptian or Sudanese, or have hung out in one of those countries, or
are an Arab who's watched a lot of Egyptian movies, you may not know
about the holiday celebrated today. Yet arguably it may be the oldest
holiday celebrated anywhere, and its name may preserve an ancient Egyptian name.

Sham al-Nassim
is Arabic, and the words mean "smelling the air," or "smelling the
breezes" if you prefer. Other than the specifically patriotic days,
such as the National Day, Military Day, etc., it's the only Egyptian
holiday celebrated with equal ardor by Muslims and Copts, and by Jews
when Egypt's Jewish population was significant. For the past couple of
thousand years, it has been celebrated on the Monday after Coptic Easter
(which coincides with the general Eastern date for Easter), thus today.

Egyptians
of all religious identities get the day off and picnic along the Nile,
if they live near it, or go to parks if they don't, eat a dried fish
called fassikh and several other traditional spring treats (though my memories of fassikh are not all that endearing: just dry, salty fish), and generally "smell the air" of spring. (According to this site, they also paint eggs. I don't recall seeing that, and perhaps it's a Western Easter import, or I just missed it.)

That's just for the past couple of millennia, though. Wikipedia's article notes the purported link to the ancient Egyptian feast of Shemu,
"creation" or "new life," celebrated at the spring equinox, which has
been documented (at least according to Wikipedia and its Egyptian
source) to 2700 BC in the Third Dynasty. On the other hand, Wikipedia's separate "Shemu" article
suggests it was a movable feast in the dry (low Nile) season.
Presumably the feast shifted with the advent of Christianity to coincide
closely with Coptic Easter, but remained essentially a spring
equinoctial celebration. Since the Muslim calendar is purely lunar, the
holiday stayed, like some others (including the Nile flood holiday),
linked to the Coptic calendar. Somewhere I believe I've read that
Plutarch even mentions the Egyptians eating dried fish at the equinox:
if so, fassikh
has been around a while. (On the other hand I tracked down a reference
to this Plutarch statement, and it was Wikipedia citing the Egyptian
State Information Service, and the State Information Service link just
goes to the main page. So the scholarship here may be a little edgy. I'm
no Egyptologist: I start with the Arab conquest and come down from
there.) (Egyptology/Coptology/Late Antiquity Grad students: term paper
subject? Send me your results.)

Like Easter itself,
which in English at least combines a Christian feast central to
Christian belief, but based on the date of Jewish Passover, with a
Germanic word relating to fertility (compare "estrus"), Sham al-Nassim
is a historical palimpsest, a syncretistic hodgepodge, that has —
besides being a great spring holiday for Egyptians of all faiths or none
— finally given me the rare opportunity to use "palimpsest,"
"syncretistic," and "hodgepodge" all in the same sentence. (Class, you
may use your dictionaries.) The ancient Egyptian spring festival was
first baptized by placing it on Coptic Easter Monday, then Islamized or
at least Egyptized by being adopted as the spring holiday for everybody
regardless of religion.

I think the only other ancient Egyptian feast that survives in the Egyptian calendar today may be the Wafa' al-Nil
in August, celebrating the Nile flood and also retaining elements of
pagan, Christian and Muslim eras, but fading a bit I think since the end
of the annual flood with the building of the Aswan High Dam.

"Michael Collins Dunn is the editor of The Middle East Journal. He also blogs. His latest posting summarizes a lot of material on the Iranian election and offers some sensible interpretation. If you are really interested in the Middle East, you should check him out regularly."— Gary Sick, Gary's Choices

"Since we’re not covering the Tunisian elections particularly well, and neither does Tunisian media, I’ll just point you over here. It’s a great post by MEI editor Michael Collins Dunn, who . . . clearly knows the country pretty well."— alle, Maghreb Politics Review

"I’ve followed Michael Collins Dunn over at the Middle East Institute’s blog since its beginning in January this year. Overall, it is one of the best blogs on Middle Eastern affairs. It is a selection of educated and manifestly knowledgeable ruminations of various aspects of Middle Eastern politics and international relations in the broadest sense."— davidroberts at The Gulf Blog

"Michael Collins Dunn, editor of the prestigious Middle East Journal, wrote an interesting 'Backgrounder' on the Berriane violence at his Middle East Institute Editor’s Blog. It is a strong piece, but imperfect (as all things are) . . ."— kal, The Moor Next DoorThis great video of Nasser posted on Michael Collins Dunn’s blog (which is one of my favorites incidentally) ...— Qifa Nabki